Climate Culture

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  • This week, declare your independence from dirty energy

    Pledge your allegiance to clean energy: declare your independence from dirty energyPhoto courtesy of NREL This weekend, we celebrate America’s independence from Britain. Brave people — the fathers and mothers of our country — stood together against the most powerful empire of the time and said, “We will be free.”  But as BP’s disastrous oil […]

    Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins Culture

  • One way to make cycling more appealing: offer better bike storage

    Nearly every major city in the world wants to get more of its residents on bicycles, as transportation hotshot Tom Vanderbilt notes in Slate today. And with good reason: compared to driving, cycling is healthier, greener, safer, quieter, and easier on public roads and congestion. Vanderbilt digs into the idea of “bicycle highways” — dedicated […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Culture

  • Robert Cluck: Texas doctor, Republican mayor, clean-air champ

    Deceptively clear skies over Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.Courtesy jacorbett70 via FlickrPhysician Robert Cluck spends his mornings working at Arlington Memorial Hospital and his afternoons as mayor of Arlington, Texas, a city of 375,000 that has one of the worst ozone problems in the country. Seeing children with asthma in the emergency room has led him […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Culture

  • Chicken expert Gail Damerow answers newbie questions

    Cluck, cluck, cluck. Bwaak! These are not sounds I expect to hear on a stroll in my North Oakland, Calif. neighborhood — the usual soundtrack is more like thumping bass, sirens, and the rattle of fast-food paper bags. And yet chickens are pecking in backyards on practically every block, in converted sheds and rickety but […]

    Bonnie Azab Powell Culture

  • Passaic riverkeeper sees signs of hope despite the slow pace of cleanup

    Andy Willner, activist and advocate of the Passaic.Photo courtesy of al-ICE g via FlickrOn Jan. 2, 1990, a leaking pipeline at Bayonne, New Jersey’s Exxon Bayway oil refinery sent 567,000 gallons of heating fuel into the surrounding waterways and marsh. Andy Willner volunteered to help the affected wildlife. He wound up collecting a truckload of […]

    Mary Bruno Culture

  • There’s no plane like home for this Malibu abode

    The architect must be having a mayday, er, heyday with this house.Considering the jumbo-jet-sized carbon emissions of air travel, it’s plane to see that the greenest place for an airplane is on the ground. Preferably before it’s flown millions of passengers around the world, but if the plane has already gone that route, why not […]

    Ashley Braun Culture

  • Live chat with Tom Philpott and Jonathan Hiskes

    Editor’s note: The chat’s now over, but you can replay it in full. Yo Grist faithful, Food Editor Tom Philpott and Staff Writer Jonathan Hiskes are joining forces for a live chat about where the Gulf oil spill is creeping — politically and ecologically — and how it connects to the clean-energy future. Join us […]

    Grist staff Culture

  • The new American can’t-do spirit

    Can we change our ways? Ditch the cars and move towards a greener approach to transportation.Photo courtesy of leelefever via flickr Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0. Americans have always been known to have a “can-do” spirit. During the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration tried out many different programs to confront the Great Depression and to spread […]

    Jon Rynn Culture

  • Is drunk biking better than drunk driving?

    Courtesy blurofinsanity.comEric DePlace at the Northwest policy shop Sightline responds to my question about why we mandate parking at bars if driving in general and drunk driving in particular both harm the public good: One thing that does work as an alternative to drinking and driving — and I can vouch for this — is […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Culture

  • What have environmentalists been most wrong about?

    Photo: limonada via FlickrFirst things first: Don’t ask me how I went from being an editor of Grist to an expert in wrongness.  It’s a long story.  Suffice it to say that in 2006, I left Grist (with much regret) in order to write a book about being wrong.  (That’s the eponymous Being Wrong: Adventures […]

    Kathryn Schulz Culture